Vodafone – too hot to trot
It was a big announcement, for sure: Vector has extended its fibre-optic network, taking on Vodafone as its first commercial customer.
All true, but the trouble was whoever was responsible for hitting the PR button down at Vodafone’s big glass box of a headquarters was too quick off the mark — the news went out to the media before the NZ stock exchange was informed. This is a no-no as, under NZX listing rules, Vector was obliged to inform the exchange first.
It seems you can be too transparent — and red, too. E-tales bets there were some faces as bright as the red furniture down at the Viaduct last week.
Kiwi puppy love
We loved it at Christmas, now, apparently, the rest of the world is loving it too. Its Very Silent Night, the song for dogs released by the NZ Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. It’s inaudible to humans as it’s recorded at a frequency only dogs can hear, but that hasn’t stopped it rocketing up the UK charts, and now, according to news site Ananova, Aussie and US distributors are vying for international rights to the innovative CD. The brainchild of Auckland ad agency DraftCB Creative, it was released as a fund-raiser.
Check out the cute video of Kiwi rapper Dei Hamo, and two equally cute if slightly under-dressed elves, on YouTube — it’s an extended version of the Christmas TV ad. The society must be wagging is virtual tail at the thought of all those worthy doggy dollars it has made.
Drinkies — the way to everyone’s heart
Expat Kiwi-turned-Microsoftie Chris Liddell has gone from strength to strength at Redmond HQ. What’s his secret where so many have failed in the Big Country? Drinking with the chaps and chapesses, it seems. Apparently, our man is one of those rarities among the big-boss class who sups with those lower down the corporate pecking order at the local watering hole.
Must be that egalitarian Kiwi streak coming to the fore. Apparently, Liddell gets on with Big Boy Ballmer, too. Perhaps they talk rugby — Ballmer’s a former rugby man.
“ell one, at”
While addressing the recent Webstock conference, on the history and possible future of information management, Kiwi Nat Torkington found said technology biting back at him.
He had prepared slides using fonts resembling archaic handwriting — to emphasise historical continuity regarding information. But, unfortunately, the PC he was using lacked some of the fonts, causing a third of the text to disappear. The result was the audience got the chance to exercise their skills of contextual information processing: to figure out, for example, that “ore’s aw” was really “”Moore’s Law” and that “ha eeks” was really “Alpha Geeks”.
Kudos to Torkington for hardly breaking stride in the face of yet another demonstration that “things [particularly technological things] are against us”.
Snail-email
Large documents beg to be dealt with electronically — but filters can gum-up transmission. However, an e-taler’s mate recently found a way to bypass such. He downloaded a big file from a website while working at home and sent it to his office machine. No joy. It wasn’t dodgy; it was totally work-relevant, but, no, the office filters still rejected the file — just because it was a biggie.
Our friend didn’t have time to wait for the document to clear the lengthy checking procedures — if it ever did — so he mailed it to himself at his home address, then, when he arrived in the office, called up his home inbox via a webmail service and took delivery of the large attachment.
Where there’s a will there is often a way.
Txting by the book
It’s gottta be the height of laziness, but, hey, your txt-fingers get tired — it’s the latest teen use of predictive text, where you just opt for the first word-option that comes up — say, “book” instead of “cool” as it’s the first “predictive” word listed.
The word experts are cool with it too — they say it means kids are not only smart but literate. However, textonymns, or t9onyms as they’ve been dubbed, are unlikely to last — way too confusing. But they do help stave off youthful txt RSI.